There is no bluffing, no banking, and no press-your-luck decision. A round has a nice shape: the first throw usually gives you a big number, the second a decent one, and then everything depends on a single die. Below are the complete rules, a worked round, the multiplication variant that turns the game into times-table practice, a printable score sheet, and what is known about where the game came from.
On this page
What do you need?
- Three ordinary six-sided dice. You don't need a board, a cup, or special dice.
- Something to write on. One number per player per round, and a place to tally who won each round. There is a blank score sheet to print further down.
- Two or more players. Three or four is the sweet spot; with more people a round just takes longer, since each player throws separately.
No dice on hand? Going to Boston needs exactly three. Roll them for free with the online dice roller, or go straight to the Going to Boston table.
How to play: the three throws
Decide who starts (the usual method is that everyone rolls one die and the highest goes first), then take turns. A whole turn is three throws and takes about fifteen seconds:
- Throw all three dice. Set aside the single die showing the highest number. If two or even three dice tie for the highest, you still set aside only one of them.
- Throw the remaining two dice. Again set aside the higher of the two, and again, if they tie, keep just one.
- Throw the last die. Whatever it shows, it stands.
- Add the three dice you set aside. That total is your score for the round. Write it down and pass the dice to the next player.
Because you always set aside exactly one die per throw, whether or not the dice tie, a turn is always three throws. There is no choice to make anywhere in the procedure, which is why the game works with young children and with a table full of people talking over each other.
The one rule people get wrong. You keep the highest die each time, not one of your choosing, and only one, even when two dice show the same top number. That keeps every player's score in the same range and makes the totals comparable.
Playing here instead of with real dice? The roller has a Going to Boston setting (tap a die to set it aside), and what it does and does not do for you is spelled out at the foot of this page.
Scoring and a worked round
Your score for a round is the sum of the three dice you set aside, so it always falls between 3 and 18. The highest score wins that round. If two players tie for the highest, they throw again to break it.
Across a session, the standard scoring is rounds won: agree on a number of rounds before you start, play them all, and whoever has won the most rounds is the overall winner. Family and classroom versions often use a different finish: everyone keeps a running total and the first player past an agreed goal, usually 100, wins. Both are in use and both play fine. The rounds-won version is the one the older rule sources give, so treat it as standard and say up front if you want to play to 100 instead.
A worked round, so the procedure is unambiguous:
| Throw | Dice thrown | Result | Set aside | Running score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 6, 6, 2 | One 6 (the other 6 goes back in) | 6 |
| 2 | 2 | 4, 1 | The 4 | 10 |
| 3 | 1 | 3 | The 3, no choice about it | 13 |
Thirteen for the round. That is an ordinary result: 13 is the single most common score in the game, coming up in about 15.6% of rounds. The average score is close to 12.9, well above the 10.5 you would average by throwing three dice and adding them, because keeping the highest die twice biases the total upward. A perfect 18 (three sixes kept) turns up in roughly 2.1% of rounds, and the worst possible 3 needs every die of all three throws to come up 1, which happens about once in 47,000 rounds.
Those figures come from working through all 46,656 equally likely combinations of the three throws. If you enjoy that sort of thing, the page on dice probability explains how the counting works for one, two and three dice.
Variants, including Multiplication
The game is small enough that most groups end up bending it. These are the ones you will actually find written down:
| Variant | What changes | Score range |
|---|---|---|
| Multiplication | Add the first two dice you set aside, then multiply that sum by the third die instead of adding all three. A 6 and a 4 followed by a 5 scores (6 + 4) × 5 = 50, not 15. | 2 to 72 |
| Race to 100 | Keep a running total instead of counting rounds won; first player to reach an agreed goal (100 is the usual pick) wins. | 3 to 18 per round |
| Count down | The same idea in reverse: everyone starts at 100 and subtracts each round's score, and the first to reach exactly zero or below wins. A subtraction drill in disguise. | 3 to 18 per round |
| Playing for stakes | The old gambling form: every player puts in a stake before the round and the winner of the round takes the pot. Nothing else changes. | 3 to 18 |
The multiplication variant is the most useful one. Scores run from 2 to 72 and average about 33, and because the last die multiplies everything, a single 1 at the end can wipe out a great start while a 6 can rescue a terrible one. That makes the rounds swing much more, and it makes the game a better fit for a child who is working on times tables rather than sums.
One caution on the multiplication rule: it is written as "the first two dice multiplied by the third", which means the two dice you set aside on throws one and two, and the die from the final throw. It is not a license to pick which pair to add.
Free printable score sheet
One line per round, one column per player, and a place to tally the rounds won. Print a blank sheet for up to four players and ten rounds. It works for the rounds-won scoring and for the race-to-100 variant, since you write a single number per player per round either way. The button prints just the sheet. The rest of the page is left out.
Going to Boston score sheet (dice-together.com)
| Round | Player 1 | Player 2 | Player 3 | Player 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | ||||
| 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 3 | ||||
| 4 | ||||
| 5 | ||||
| 6 | ||||
| 7 | ||||
| 8 | ||||
| 9 | ||||
| 10 | ||||
| Rounds won | ||||
| Total (if playing to 100) |
In the classroom and at the kitchen table
Going to Boston is widely used for math practice. Every round produces one addition problem (three single-digit numbers, with a total between 3 and 18), and a child will work through dozens of them in a sitting without a worksheet. There is no strategy to distract from the arithmetic and no reading, so a table of mixed ages can play together at full speed.
On difficulty: adding three single-digit numbers to a total under 20 is roughly where children are in the first years of elementary school, so the plain game suits about first to third grade. When those sums stop being work, switch to the multiplication variant. It asks for a number up to 12 times a number up to 6, which is times-table practice, and it needs no explaining beyond one worked example. The count-down variant does the same job for subtraction. One game covers addition, then multiplication, then subtraction, which is why teachers keep using it.
A practical note for a whole class or a big family group: three dice go round slowly when fifteen people are waiting. Splitting into groups of three or four fixes it. If you are playing in a living room, the Dice Together Android app can cast the dice to the TV, so everyone sees the same throw at the same time and nobody has to lean over the table. The same works for a classroom screen.
Looking for more games with this kind of built-in arithmetic? Shut the Box is the best of them for splitting and adding numbers, Pig teaches risk alongside mental addition, and there is a whole page of dice games for kids.
Where the game comes from
Going to Boston is a folk game, which means there is no inventor, no publisher and no first edition, only the record of people playing it. The clearest documented trace is American and nautical: the USS Constitution Museum publishes it as a nineteenth-century dice game that sailors aboard USS Constitution may have used to pass leisure hours with their shipmates, and offers it as a classroom activity alongside its other War-of-1812 shipboard-life material. The museum presents it as a pastime of the period and does not claim the game was invented aboard.
Rules archives also record the game under the names Yankee Grab and Newmarket. Be careful with the second: Newmarket is far better known as a card game, so a group announcing Newmarket almost certainly means cards. There is no Wikipedia article for the dice game under any of its names, and the printed rule sources are thin, which suggests it spread by being taught at tables rather than written down.
Its shape is old, too. Setting a die aside and rerolling the rest is the same basic move that drives Yahtzee and its many ancestors, and dice themselves have been rolled in essentially this form for thousands of years. The history of dice page covers that long story.
Play it now in your browser
The roller on this site has a Going to Boston setting. Open the Going to Boston table and you get three dice with the game's turn rules switched on: after a roll you can tap a die to set it aside, and it stays put on the next roll. Once a die is set aside it is locked for the rest of the turn, just as a die pushed to the side of the table would be. Set all three aside and the next roll starts a fresh turn with all three tumbling again.
The roller has two limits you should know about:
- It does not enforce the rule. The roller will let you set aside the 2 instead of the 6. Keeping the highest die is still your job, and your opponents' job to watch.
- It does not count your throws. Nothing stops you at three; you keep track of that yourself, the same way you would with real dice.
The running total under the dice adds up everything currently showing, so read it at the end of a turn: at that moment the three dice on the table are exactly the three you kept, and the total is your score for the round. If you would rather have three plain dice with no turn rules at all (handy for the multiplication variant, where you may prefer to do the arithmetic yourself), use three plain dice instead.
Frequently asked questions about Going to Boston
What is the dice game Going to Boston?
Going to Boston is a three-dice game in which every player gets three throws per round. You roll all three dice and set the highest one aside, roll the remaining two and set the highest of those aside, then roll the last die on its own. The three dice you set aside, added together, are your score for the round, and the highest score wins the round. It is a nineteenth-century American folk game that the USS Constitution Museum documents as a way sailors passed the time aboard USS Constitution.
How do you score Going to Boston?
Add the three dice you set aside during your three throws. The lowest possible score is 3 and the highest is 18. The highest total wins the round, and a tie between players is settled by rolling again. Groups normally agree on a number of rounds before they start, and whoever has won the most rounds at the end is the overall winner.
What happens if two dice show the same highest number?
You still set aside only one of them. If your first throw comes up 5, 5 and 2, you keep a single 5 and throw the other two dice again. The same applies on the second throw. That is why a round always takes exactly three throws, whatever the dice do.
What is the multiplication variant of Going to Boston?
In the multiplication version you add the first two dice you set aside and multiply that sum by the third die, instead of adding all three. So a 6 and a 4 followed by a 5 scores 50 rather than 15. Scores then run from 2 to 72 and average about 33, which makes the rounds swing much harder than in the standard game.
Is Going to Boston the same game as Yankee Grab or Newmarket?
Rules archives list Yankee Grab and Newmarket as alternative names for the same three-throw dice game, so you may well meet it under one of those titles. Newmarket is worth a warning, though: it is far better known as a card game, so a group that says it is playing Newmarket is much more likely to mean cards than dice.
Is Going to Boston a good math game for children?
It is a natural fit for children who are practicing addition with single-digit numbers, because every round is one small sum with a total between 3 and 18 and the game gives them a reason to do dozens of those sums in a sitting. The multiplication variant raises it to multiplying a number up to 12 by a number up to 6. Both the USS Constitution Museum and teaching sites publish the game as a classroom activity.